Sunday, November 19, 2017

Attitudes about cultural groups develops in three phases. The first phase is from two and half to three years old. This is when children become aware of cultural differences. Phase two starts around age four and this is when children begin to notice the ways they are similar to others and have specific cultural related words and concepts. For example, this when children notice that they may be white but someone in their preschool class is a different color. This is when children start to use words such as black, white, christian or catholic to explain the difference in color of skin or religion.

Phase three begins around age seven when children begin to have attitudes towards various cultural groups. For example, a child may play with a child who is black but not Indian or may play with children who are white but not mixed. The development of attitudes is influenced by a child's age, cognitive development and social experiences. The last phase is important in discussing attitudes and belief development because it's during the middle childhood years that this phase occurs. During the third phase children become familiar with the various ways people within their family interact with others in the community. They begin to notice things like discrimination, violence, and prejudice. This is why it is important to make sure that our words and actions match and that we are the kind of people we want our children to be. It is also important at this age to make sure that we are teaching our children the importance of equality by treating our children with equality. Our example isn't something that can be fixed.

Sunday, November 12, 2017

Parents, siblings and caregivers are the people who infants and toddlers spend the majority of their day with and they have the biggest impact on their attitudes and values. Children who are exposed to encouraging, positive people are more likely to take on those attitudes as they grow up. It's because of developments in cognitive functioning those later attitudes and beliefs are formed.

The people children spend the majority of their day with can intentionally or unintentionally teach infants and toddlers behaviors or beliefs about what they can or can't accomplish. For example, if a parent continues to feed their child after the age they should be able to feed themselves, they're teaching the child that feeding themselves is something they can't accomplish. If a parent lets a child feed themselves when they're developmentally ready, the child will learn that feeding themselves is something they can accomplish.

Attributions are explanations for one's performance or causes of events. External attributions happen when individuals place the blame for behavior or performance on someone or something other than themselves. For example, if a child throws a ball in the house and it breaks something, and the child says a sibling mad them do it, this is an external attribution. Internal attributions happen when individuals place the blame for behavior or performance on themselves. For example, if a child throws a ball in the house and it breaks something and the child says, I did it," this is an internal attribution. The infant and toddler years are the most important years of teaching attributions. The behaviors and beliefs taught at this age through these attributions will stick with the child their whole life.

Sunday, November 5, 2017

Three Central tasks of parenting are to teach children values, behaviors and expectations of a society and culture. There are different approaches to educating children. One approach is to help children find safe activities. For example, during the summer parents can take children to museums and find summer sports for their children to participate in. There are swimming teams to be a part of and art classes and there are always programs to participate in at the local library.

Another approach to educating children is to provide children with a sense of empowerment and acceptable safe choices. Both a sense of empowerment and safe acceptable choices protects the child and fosters responsibility. For example, giving a child a task such as unloading the dishwasher gives a child a sense of empowerment because it's a task they can accomplish on their own. When a parent gives a child acceptable, safe choices such as you can either wear sunscreen or not go to the pool, this teaches a child about sun safety and protects a child from the harm of sunburn etc. that the sun can cause and it creates responsibility of sun safety.

There a variety of ways to reduce the amount of unnecessary guidance and discipline that can happen while raising a child. One is to make sure activities are developmentally appropriate. This can be accomplished by providing a variety of activities. Activities should be revised based on the unique learning needs of the child which involves observes learning styles, social interactions, and comfort with the activity. Environments need to be evaluated for safety hazards, lack of interesting and challenging opportunities and elements that can cause discipline problems as a result of design.

To address challenges the balanced approach to guidance helps children become socialized to the culture they grow up in. The balanced approach consists of respect for the child's emotional needs, respect for individual differences, respect for power of development and respect for self. A differentiated approach can also help children become socialized. The differentiated approach is where expectations, activities, tasks and outcomes are changed by the parent depending on the child's abilities, learning style, and overall development. Behaviorism is an important type of learning. When the two categories of behaviorism- rewards and punishment- are used it becomes a guiding technique to help parents teach their children between appropriate and inappropriate behavior. Ways to reduce potential discipline problems include matching learning activities and expectations with how children learn and being sensitive to individual learning styles, temperaments and pace of learning.

When parents use these techniques when disciplining their children it will help parents keep discipline use appropriate and from giving a consequence that may not go along with the offense.

Sunday, October 29, 2017

Albert Bandura is the theorist most associated with our understanding of modeling. According to Bandura modeling can teach new behaviors, increase the frequency of forbidden behaviors and increase the frequency of similar behaviors. For example, modeling can teach a new behavior because if a child see a parent say thank you to the checkout clerk at a store every time they're out, the child will learn to say thank you to the checkout clerk every time they go to the store.

An example of increasing frequency of a forbidden behavior is when a parent yells at their spouse in front of the children so that a child yells at the parent as well whenever they talk to the parent. From a discipline perspective modeling can teach and increase desired behaviors. Negative behaviors can increase through modeling as well. The exception to the rule is modeling. Modeling is both a cognitive and behavioral process of social learning because it's the process where a person observes the actions of others and copies them.

Modeling works when a child first observes the behavior of the model, and after the behavior of the model is reinforced, the child repeats the behavior. For example, a child may see a sibling set the table every day before their parents get home. One day, the sibling may not be home to do it, so the child who observed the sibling setting the table every day may set the table in the siblings absence.

The reinforcement of the models behavior is called vicarious reinforcement and is the behavioral part of modeling. The ability of the child to imitate the model's behavior and motivation to do so make up the cognitive part of modeling. Modeling both real and symbolic can effectively teach pro-social behaviors.